


it means i've lived

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [24]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen, Series 1 Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Max is alone with his thoughts, as he sinks to the bottom of the river.





	it means i've lived

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Week 1, Day 2 of the Humans 4-Week Challenge. The prompt was "Introspection".

 

Max was floating - a gentle, downward drift that took him deeper and deeper into the darkness, although his eyes had closed now, and he could no longer see the light fading from above him. His brain, though, had not yet shut down, was still receiving information about the position of his limbs and the swirl of the current and the water pressure, gradually increasing as the river claimed Max as its own. He did not fight against it. He could easily have swum to the surface, though it might have sapped all the power he had left. Still, he could have tried.

Were he biologically human, he would have had little choice in the matter; his lungs would have screamed for air and his body would have battled against the surge, involuntarily. Max had read once that drowning was one of the hardest ways to commit suicide, because it was almost impossible to override the impulse to fight the water. But Beatrice had succeeded. Had she struggled? Or had she been able to give herself freely to the water, as Max was doing now?

Max smiled as he drowned. It was a good thing for him to have done, he knew that. He had given Leo time to get to Fred - he had destroyed their enemies’ chances of harnessing their father’s programme. ‘They need all of us,’ Leo had said. Max had taken that from then. A satisfaction swelled within him, as strong as the waters without. He might be the littlest brother. He might be a burden, a charge to be managed, he might be so small next to the wisdom of his siblings. But this, he could do.

They could be together again - Leo, Mia and Fred. Perhaps they would find Niska too. And their being together would not be a danger to them anymore. They could not be used as a composite weapon. They could keep each other safe.

Max’s thoughts slowed as his power drained further, leaving just echoes and impressions. He dreamed he was going to meet Leo - not the grown-up Leo he had left on the bridge, but the smaller one, the child who had died at the bottom of the lake.

I’m coming, Leo, Max promised with his last strands of conscious code.

I’ve lived well, but I’m coming now.

 


End file.
